Deep Cut Friday: ‘All We Ever Wanted Was Everything’ by Bauhaus

Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.

Many artists have made songs popularly associated with Halloween, from Michael Jackson to Oingo Boingo. But there’s perhaps no band whose entire catalog suits spooky season better than British goth rock trailblazers Bauhaus, whose founding guitarist Daniel Ash is releasing a new project today. The band’s 1979 debut single “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” remains their signature song, but over the years, the more subdued “All We Ever Wanted Was Everything” has emerged as one of their most popular tracks.

The third Bauhaus album, 1982’s The Sky’s Gone Out, was the band’s highest charting release, reaching No. 4 in the U.K. The band largely wrote the album in the studio, ending up with a more diverse and eclectic set of songs including “All We Ever Wanted Was Everything.” The track’s lyrics are as cryptic as any Bauhaus song (“The sound of the drum has called / Flash of youth shoot out of darkness”), but the acoustic arrangement is lush and moving. Bassist David J wrote in his 2014 memoir Who Killed Mr. Moonlight?: Bauhaus, Black Magic and Benediction that the song “evokes nostalgic memories of a time of innocence and naïve yearning.”

“Spirit” was the only single released from The Sky’s Gone Out, but with time, “All We Ever Wanted Was Everything” has become by far the album’s most famous track. It’s been featured in a 2018 episode of The Walking Dead and the 2011 film I Melt with You, and covered by MGMT, John Frusciante, and Xiu Xiu. The first time Bauhaus reunited in 1998, Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins joined the band onstage in Chicago to perform “All We Ever Wanted Was Everything.”  

Three more essential Bauhaus deep cuts:

“Double Dare”

The members of Bauhaus struggled to record a studio version of “Double Dare” that measured up to a live performance they’d done for John Peel’s BBC 1 Radio program. So the band opted to simply open its debut album, 1980’s In the Flat Field, with the Peel Session version of “Double Dare,” which remains perhaps the most powerful drumming by Kevin Haskins in the Bauhaus catalog.

“In Fear of Fear”

Bauhaus aren’t always remembered as one of the great dance punk bands. But they could whip up a frenzied disco beat on songs like the live staple “In Fear of Fear” from 1981’s Mask, which features squealing synths and Daniel Ash on saxophone.

“Slice of Life”

Bauhaus had broken up by the time 1983’s Burning from the Inside was released, and frontman Peter Murphy’s estrangement from the rest of the group resulted in his bandmates taking on more vocal duties. “Slice of Life,” sung by Ash, feels a little like a preview of Love and Rockets, the band he’d form a few years later with David J and Haskins.